Introducing the newest member of JSF: Buckley

Our dog Sonny, who we adopted in January (see “Introducing Sonny!“) is awesome. Over the past 9 months Sonny has brought Lisa and I more joy and happiness than I can describe. Just thinking about him brings a smile to my face. 🙂

Sonny is an American Staffordshire Terrier/Black Mouth Cur mix. To say that he’s merely energetic is like saying the Universe is somewhat large. I’ve managed to tire him out a handful of times, but he recovers in minutes–well before me.

Lisa and I have discussed adding another furry family member, but with several major things in our lives in flux right now, the timing didn’t feel right.

All that went out the window on Saturday morning.

I was on the way to my morning ride with my friend Hector, when Lisa called:

“Hey babe, what’s up?”

“I have a dog in my car!”

“Why?”, I asked, already knowing the answer.

“There was a dog running in the middle of the road (a 4 lane busy road) and I had to stop and help him!”

“Um, aren’t you on the way to work?”, I asked.

“Yes!”

Lisa said the dog was covered in fleas, and stunk to high heaven. Luckily her place of employment is right next door to a pet salon, and she is good friends with the owner. Lisa said she was going to take the dog to the salon for a flea bath and nail trimming, and the dog could stay there while she worked.

The salon was going to close before Lisa got off from work, so she asked if I could swing by and get the dog on the way back from my morning ride.

The condensed version of the rest of conversation went something like this:

“I guess”, I replied. “I’m glad you helped the dog, but you know we can’t keep him, right?”

“I know, I know. I just didn’t know what else to do!”

I agreed to come get the pup after the ride, and we hung up. I turned to Hector and said, “Goddamn it, we have a new dog.”

Of course we would make every attempt to hunt down the dog’s owner, but based on the description of the dog that Lisa gave me we were fairly certain this dog was never in any kind of a real home (we’ve been down this road quite a few times).

Yeah, I knew there was no getting away from this one. Even though I was acting gruff, I was secretly excited. I love dogs, and helping animals makes me feel great. There’s nothing like looking into a dog’s eyes that’s never known what a real home and real love feels like, and is finally experiencing those things for the first time.

When I picked up the dog I saw that he was un-neutered male, about 9 or 10 months old, an American Staffordshire Terrier/Boxer mix (commonly known as a Pit Bull), playful, super sweet and had enough energy to power a medium-sized city.

On the ride home the pup sat between me and Hector, climbing around, pawing the steering wheel and in general doing his best to make me crash my truck.

After I dropped Hector off, I went home, took a deep breath and opened the front door. “Please get along, please get along!”

After the usual routine of excited dog greetings, Sonny and the new dog began to play. Rough, but friendly. No tense moments at all. Whew!

They played, played some more and then kept playing. I’m talking hours. They finally chilled out, and that lasted about 10 minutes. After that brief dog nap, they went right back to insane mode, and that continued for pretty much the rest of the day.

I posted about the dog all over the place, and scoured everything from Craigslist to all the online forums and Facebook pages. No hits, no one looking.

It quickly became clear to us that this dog had never been inside before. He was in an alien world, and was loving it. 🙂

He knew absolutely no commands and had no idea how to behave in a home. Even something as simple as chasing after a ball perplexed him. I don’t think this dog has ever even played with a person before.

Over the weekend we taught him some basic commands like sit, lay and stay. He’s really picking up on things quickly, too!

He’s super sweet, not a mean bone in his body. His tail is wagging constantly, and he follows me around like I’m a god or something. Best of all, he can keep up with Sonny when they play.

I took him to the vet yesterday for a full check-up, vaccinations and a chip scan. He is not chipped, which didn’t surprise me at all. He’d obviously been loose for awhile, and has some minor injuries and lots of flea bites. His fur is thin in spots, but it’s not mange or anything, just a poor diet. He is heartworm negative, which is a huge relief! He tested positive for hook worms, but that’s not a big deal and he was treated for that yesterday. I’ll be taking him back to the vet in a few weeks to be neutered and chipped.

Over the weekend I named him “Buckles”. Once he had a name, the thin facade we were attempting to maintain was ripped away: we knew that we were keeping him.

Even though I initially named him Buckles, Lisa and I kept calling him “Buckley” for some reason. I guess Buckley just rolls off the tongue a little easier. So yesterday we decided that his name is going to be Buckley. He doesn’t mind the slight change. 🙂

Here are a couple of crappy shots I took this morning. I’ll get some better photos over the next few days.

Buckley (left) and Sonny, a rare quiet moment.

Buckley doesn’t know "stay" quite as well as Sonny yet, but he’s learning!

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